Althea had been some time sleeping quietly, neither articulating nor moaning. Dr. Hardy watched her as only doctors watch their patients. It was more to him than a question of life and death--it was somewhat like the alchemist, trembling with hope and fear over his costly dissolvents. At length, Althea's eyes opened, glanced hastily around and closed again. Dr. Hardy was not surprised. For the last half hour he had been expecting this, but he had given no sign. When her eyes again opened, he put some drops to her lips, which she readily swallowed. By-and-bye she gave a look of thorough consciousness, accompanied with an effort to speak. Again, in an hour, she looked earnestly at Dr. Hardy, and moved her lips. He bent low to listen, and only himself caught her words: "Send for the priest." Dr. Hardy frowned. Was this old anxiety going yet to ruin all? Couldn't she die or live without the priest? "You are going to get well now," he whispered in reply. "Send for Father Ryan, for God's sake," she again repeated, so forcibly that Kitty caught the words. "I will go for him," she said eagerly, but the doctor interfered. "No, I will see Mr. Rush;" for the anger of that man and his future hostility was not a pleasing prospective to the easy-going doctor, ever ready to propitiate. Mr. Rush was like a lion, aroused from his sleep, in which he had found temporary oblivion of a torturing headache. The doctor's words were not audible in the sick room, but Kitty distinctly heard the reply of Thornton Rush: "I tell you I don't care. I don't believe it will make the least difference. If she has a mind to worry, let her worry; I won't have a Catholic priest in the house. I'll have the devil first. If she is going to live, she will live, anyhow. I have never thought she would die yet. For God's sake, let me alone, and don't waken me again, no matter what happens." The doctor returned with lugubrious visage. But Kitty's was radiant. She was seized with a thought or an inspiration, and she whispered: "I will take all the blame upon myself; he cannot more than kill me. It is a good time--he has left orders to be let alone. The priest can come and go before he knows it," and she darted out without another word. The doctor and Mrs. Moffat looked smilingly across at each other in the faint lamp-light, but neither made a movement for Kitty's detention. As the faithful girl had said, "the priest came and went" before the master knew anything about it. And Althea, having passed through her earthly purgatory, and now hovering, as she thought, upon the borders of death, had been baptized by water into newness of life, and been strengthened by that heavenly food, which is more and diviner than the bread of angels. CHAPTER XXVIII. MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE.